The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to improving uplink airtime fairness through basic service set steering.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). A wireless network, for example a WLAN, such as a Wi-Fi (i.e., IEEE 802.11) network may include an access point (AP) that may communicate with one or more stations (STAs) or mobile devices. The AP may be coupled to a network, such as the Internet, and may enable a STA to communicate via the network (or communicate with other devices coupled to the AP). A wireless device may communicate with a network device bi-directionally. For example, in a WLAN, a STA may communicate with an associated AP via downlink (DL) and uplink (UL). The DL (or forward link) may refer to the communication link from the AP to the STA, and the UL (or reverse link) may refer to the communication link from the STA to the AP.
Airtime Fairness (ATF) is a wireless communications system technique that may be used to improve system performance by managing the amount of airtime allocated for various STAs in a wireless communications system and may be employed by an AP used to limit DL transmissions. In wireless communications systems employing ATF, equal airtime may be allocated to each STA connected to an AP to limit the amount of airtime consumed by lower data rate STAs in order to provide additional airtime to higher data rate STAs.
While ATF efficiently manages airtime for DL transmissions, wireless communications systems employing ATF may not suitably handle situations in which a STA monopolizes or overloads a channel with data transmissions. In some cases, this may result in less overall airtime for high priority traffic (e.g., video streaming) and the quality of service (QoS) for the high priority traffic may degrade. This may also result in less airtime for high data rate (or higher priority) devices of the wireless communications system that are transmitting (or attempting to transmit) data packets, ultimately degrading the performance of the high data rate (or higher priority) devices.